The Undead Labs technical art team is looking for an experienced technical artist to help us develop industry-leading graphics for our next big title. You’ll be working in a first-party XGS studio, with other developers in art, tech art, and graphics engineering, to build the infrastructure to support an emerging global franchise.
We are looking specifically for a collaborative technical artist who can help us design our material pipeline including initial design spec, material library, artist tools, and optimized UE4 shaders. Bring your skills in building an intuitive, high-quality shader/material pipeline that is stylistically expressive, believable and grounded in PBR principles.
At Undead Labs, we work in highly collaborative, cross-discipline teams because we understand that the best ideas are ones we generate together. We are creators of hit survival-fantasy franchise State of Decay played by millions, and we operate independently as part of a network of studios now owned by Microsoft. We have a rich history of entrepreneurship and empowerment that will carry us forward as we reach new levels of quality, ambition, and polish.
Core Responsibilities & Objectives:
- Gather requirements from a cross-discipline team to develop a cohesive look for the projects materials
- Translate concepts into a streamlined production pipeline, shared material library and optimized run-time shaders in UE4
- Plan, organize and prioritize overall roadmap of material / surfacing tasks with production
- Create physically-based shaders and materials for a broad variety of asset types
- Create a structure for a shared Substance Library to support artists
- Solve technical challenges, improve content creation, and advance the quality of our materials
- Create validation tools, documentation and champion these studio-wide to support technical guidelines for surfacing
- Collaborate with artists to improve their workflow and efficiency
- Contribute to the development of surfacing techniques and processes used to achieve a product’s visual style
- Apply continuous improvement based on emerging trends and technology, and competitive products
- Work with minimal direction and take on responsibilities within a team-based work environment
- Deliver optimized shaders and shader pipelines
- Own the problem space for surfacing solutions, tools needs, and bugs related to shaders, surfacing tools and pipelines
Core Traits (Skills, Knowledge, Experience)
- Experience with physically-based rendering tools, shaders and materials
- Experienced with graphics diagnostic tools and performance analysis on modern graphics hardware.
- Solid understanding of lighting fundamentals
- Experience leveraging Substance Designer and Painter to build out shared studio material libraries
- Proficiency with DCC tools such as Substance, Houdini, Maya, Photoshop, etc.
- Demonstrated experience developing optimized shaders for shipped titles in UE 4
- Excellent understanding of game engines, tools, pipelines and development practice
- Mature understanding of Python
- Ideally brings 5-8 years of progressively complex related experience
Bonus Traits
- Experience with photogrammetry or material scanning
- Understanding of HDR and HDR methodologies, Gamma and Exposure
- Technical ability with blueprint and node based scripting
- Traditional drawing, painting, photography or sculpture skills
Physical Requirements
Close vision to monitors and screens, consistently working on computer equipment such as keyboards and monitors, long periods of sitting. Noise levels are low to moderate in the work environment. Reasonable accommodations can be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Undead Labs is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances.
We look forward to hearing from you!